I fully agree on-the-job training should be much more common, especially in larger companies, and in many fields you can end up with a better fit by just training someone in exactly what you need rather then trying to find someone who knows it all already. That being said, I have firsthand experience hiring/training/supervising in fields that are almost entirely on-the-job training, and it can be very difficult to determine if a potential new-hire will learn well, and you will always have more then a few new-hires who will still struggle with the most basic aspects of the job even after many weeks of hand-holding.
> That “bad apple” may have some things going on at home
Dealing with this is a potential minefield from a legal perspective though. The answer you get here could very well suggest an abusive domestic situation, suicidal feelings, or worse. You need someone with special training to even ask this question. Once asked, at best the answer is usually something you can’t do anything about, at worst it’s something you ethically have to do something about that involves police or lawyers. Within that, you have a whole class of answers that you cannot do anything about, but also put you in a position where should you need to terminate the employee afterwards for ANY reason, you leave yourself open to wrongful termination suites.
To be clear -- I'm not saying this is how it should be; I would much prefer to live in a world where everyone looked out for everyone else, but a business (especially a public company) can't base it's policies on an ideal world, they have to base their policies on the litigious/capitalist framework they currently exist in.
The whole equation is different between a new-hire vs long-term employee of course, but it’s never without risk.
> have a grievance … was shutdown
These are more nuanced, and the exact situation/details would matter, but unless they were shut-down in a unprofessional way, or the grievance is a serious issue from the business’s perspective, a new-hire not doing their job just because they are upset about something like this is a pretty big red-flag in my book. These things happen to everyone, in every company, at some point. It would be worth having a discussion with the employee about it, but from my experience, this is a personality trait, and not a behavioral issue that can easily be changed.
